Traditionally, peripheral devices lack any Operating System (OS) and are completely controlled through firmware and device driver commands sent from the host to which the peripheral devices are connected. This means that the host completely controls the peripheral and the peripheral is primarily a “dumb” device.
More recently, peripheral devices include a limited OS making such peripheral devices more autonomous than what has been available in the industry. Still, most of these peripheral devices lack any network connectivity (or included an extremely limited independent network connectivity) and these peripherals generally do not support processing any customized applications beyond the applications packaged with the peripheral (even though these peripherals include a processor).
Because of the limited connectivity and difficulty in processing customized applications, these peripherals are more intelligent than their predecessors but are still only marginally “intelligent.”